Richard Whately Quotes

53 quotes in 528 categories

• He only is exempt from failures who makes no efforts.
• Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
• To know your ruling passion, examine your castles in the air.
• Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
• To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about…
• In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
• The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and the introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that…
• To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another.
• The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.
• Happiness is no laughing matter.
• It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits.
• Not in books only, nor yet in oral discourse, but often also in words there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no…
• It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
• Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
• Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves.
• It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they…
• Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which…
• A man will never change his mind if he have no mind to change.
• It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of…
• The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind...

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